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Garnett, Mark. "Edmund Burke (1729–97)." Conservative Moments: Reading Conservative Texts. Ed. Mark Garnett. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 35–42. Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 25 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350001565.ch-005>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 25 September 2021, 16:39 UTC. Copyright © Mark Garnett 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 35 CHAPTER FIVE Edmund Burke (1729– 97) Mark Garnett In this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would be better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they fi nd what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the 99781350001534_pi-158.indd781350001534_pi-158.indd 3355 220-Apr-180-Apr-18 77:02:41:02:41 PPMM 36 36 CONSERVATIVE MOMENTS man hesitating in a moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature. 1 Edmund Burke’s claims for inclusion in the present volume are obvious; indeed, he is widely recognized as the founder of modern conservatism. Born and educated in Ireland, Burke abandoned the idea of following his father into the legal profession after migrating to London in 1750. Initially, he supported himself through writing, publishing A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful in 1757 and becoming the founder- editor of the Annual Register in the following year. Always fascinated by politics, in 1765, he was appointed private secretary to the prime minister, Lord Rockingham, whose infl uence secured him a seat in the House of Commons. He remained an MP for almost 30 years, and served briefl y as a junior government minister in the 1780s. The problem of selection is unusually acute in Burke’s case. The critic William Hazlitt – a vehement opponent of Burke’s ideas – wrote after his death that ‘to do him justice, it would be necessary to quote all his works; the only specimen of Burke is, all that he wrote’. 2 The excerpt chosen for this chapter comes from the predictable source – Burke’s Refl ections on the Revolution in France (1790), from which numerous passages could be selected. This one typifi es the characteristic which makes the Refl ections such a notable landmark in the history of conservative thought. Burke attacked the French Revolution – then in its early stages – both in theory and practice. Yet his account was not purely negative; the positive reasons Burke advanced for adhering to the status quo in France were founded on principles which could be applied in other countries (not least Britain itself). In short, through his defence of the pre- Revolutionary regime in France, Burke furnished something like a transnational manifesto for anyone who shared his general antipathy towards radical change. As the excerpt suggests, Burke founded his case on a specifi c view of human nature. Tacitly, he drew a distinction between ‘Men of speculation’ and members of a community who, whether or not they enjoy direct political infl uence, do not endeavour to penetrate beneath the surface of events. Embracing without apology a word which even in Burke’s day had strongly negative connotations – as Jane Austen confi rmed in 1813 by twinning it with ‘pride’ – Burke argued that ‘prejudice’ was crucial to any functioning society. His notion of prejudice could, perhaps, have been given the more positive name of ‘common sense’; it was a compound of intuition, folk memory and personal experience. This, he argued, is a far more reliable guide to action than abstract reason. In social interactions, 99781350001534_pi-158.indd781350001534_pi-158.indd 3366 220-Apr-180-Apr-18 77:02:41:02:41 PPMM 37 EDMUND BURKE 37 it leads to a spontaneous preference for ‘virtuous’ conduct. In politics, it inspires profound respect for long- established institutions and practices. On close examination, political arrangements which seem unsupported by anything beyond unthinking ‘prejudice’ will almost invariably turn out to be susceptible to justifi cation on rational grounds. Limited reforms will usually be suffi cient to redress perceived abuses; in contrast, radical measures inspired by visions of political perfection are likely to make a tolerable situation much worse. On the face of it, Burke’s account could seem to have egalitarian implications. If prejudice is such a reliable guide, surely it must be safe to trust the general judgement of the people? However, Burke was a vehement opponent of democratic ideas, and spoke out against even modest proposals to reform the existing franchise in that direction. In the course of a 1782 speech on this subject, he had argued that ‘The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise.’ 3 This seems diffi cult to reconcile with the message of the Refl ections , which implies that prejudice is good precisely because it prompts virtuous conduct without any need for ‘deliberation’. Burke, though, would not have recognized any inconsistency. In his view, ‘the bank and capital of nations, and of ages’ suggested that political decisions should be entrusted to a suitably qualifi ed elite. Thankfully, in Britain, there was a popular ‘prejudice’ in favour of this arrangement, which allowed ordinary people to go about their business without demanding greater infl uence in matters beyond their comprehension. At times of crisis, it may be proper for opinion- leaders – ‘men of speculation’ – to examine existing principles and practices. If the elite uses its infl uence responsibly, it will provide reassurance to ‘the multitude’, since, on inspection, it will discover the ‘latent wisdom’ which underpins the status quo. The real danger to society lies not in the prejudice in favour of deference, but rather in the possibility that ‘men of speculation’ will betray their privileged position by encouraging ‘the multitude’ to take independent action, or (still worse) to start speculating for themselves. The ensuing debate showed that Burke had been right to identify the concept of ‘prejudice’ as a key line of division among commentators on the Revolution. In his reply to Burke, The Rights of Man (1791), Thomas Paine admitted that ‘We have but a defective idea of what prejudice is.’ But whatever it might be, it should be eradicated and replaced by ‘opinion’, which demanded rational refl ection. ‘No man’, Paine wrote, ‘is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it in the belief that it is right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.’ 4 Paine thought that everyone should be suffi ciently educated to be in a position to develop ‘opinions’, rather than relying on ‘prejudice’. During the American Revolution, Burke and Paine had been allies of a kind, since Burke sympathized with the American rebels. But times had changed dramatically 99781350001534_pi-158.indd781350001534_pi-158.indd 3377 220-Apr-180-Apr-18 77:02:41:02:41 PPMM 38 38 CONSERVATIVE MOMENTS since then, and what Paine had considered to be ‘common sense’ when he wrote the infl uential pamphlet of that name (1775– 76) seemed a recipe for murderous chaos to Edmund Burke of 1789. ‘Common sense’ and ‘prejudice’ might be value- laden words to denote what is essentially the same thing, but to the followers of Burke and Paine, they suggested entirely different responses to the political dilemmas of France after 1789. The Burkean view implies an overriding concern for social and political stability; Paine’s ideas suggest a refusal to tolerate anything other than a dispensation which would win approval from a ‘rational’ observer. In short, responses to the debate between Burke and Paine over the value of ‘prejudice’ can be regarded as a key diagnostic test of ‘conservatism’ and liberalism to this day. Burke’s Refl ections was a major publishing success even before the worst excesses of the French Revolution; when the French political classes started using the guillotine to settle their political scores, he could be hailed as an inspired prophet. This did not mean, however, that Burke was right in his diagnosis of the causes of the Revolution. As someone who attributed a central role in politics to ideas, it was not surprising that he was unduly harsh on French philosophes , notably Voltaire and Rousseau (‘Atheists are not our preachers: madmen are not our lawgivers’ [137]).
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